Gary Marcus 驳斥 Amodei：5-10 年内治愈多数疾病不现实
No, Dario Amodei, we will not be curing cancer and “most human disease” in five to ten years
Perfect example of egregious CEO Says journalism
CEO 式新闻的典型恶劣案例
On Saturday, Dario Amodei claimed (in a long defense of his company’s approach to AI) that he thinks it “will actually be possible to cure most human disease in ~5-10 years”, highlighting “curing cancer” among other goals. As usual, some in the media ate it up.
周六，Dario Amodei 声称（在为其公司 AI 方法的长篇辩护中）他认为“实际上有可能在约 5-10 年内治愈大多数人类疾病”，并特别提到“治愈癌症”等目标。和往常一样，一些媒体对此趋之若鹜。
And I wish it were true. But his timeline is so naive as to be absurd, both with respect to how medical science works and why it is challenging.
我希望这是真的。但他的时间表既天真又荒谬，无论是就医学科学的运作方式，还是就其挑战性而言。
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If you haven’t already done so, I strongly recommend you read (or reread) the March essay I wrote about AI and cancer, which builds on an essay by Emilia Javorsky. That essay started with Javorsky’s observation that (as of March) not one drug designed by AI had yet reached clinical adoption, even after over a decade of efforts.
如果你还没有这样做，我强烈建议你阅读（或重读）我三月写的关于 AI 和癌症的文章，该文基于 Emilia Javorsky 的一篇文章。那篇文章开头引用了 Javorsky 的观察：截至三月，即使经过十多年的努力，还没有一种由 AI 设计的药物达到临床采用阶段。
Part of the crux of my essay (and hers) was that even if AI were a lot better, curing disease is hard, both economically and technically, and you also can’t simply skip the time-consuming clinical work. (I further argued that we don’t really have the right kind of causally- and biologically-sophisticated AI yet. New advances in AI and math don’t fundamentally change what I wrote there.)
我文章（以及她的文章）的核心部分在于，即使 AI 更好，治愈疾病在经济上和技术上都是困难的，而且你也不能简单地跳过耗时的临床工作。（我进一步论证，我们还没有真正拥有那种因果和生物学上复杂的 AI。AI 和数学的新进展并没有从根本上改变我写的内容。）
The happy news is that you don’t have to take my word for any of this anymore. The mood has changed, and this time a whole pile of people pushed back. I have yet to see Amodei’s ridiculous claim dissected in the mainstream media, but below are some of the many tweets over the weekend that rightly took Amodei to task.
好消息是，你不再需要相信我的话了。情绪已经改变，这次有一大堆人进行了反驳。我还没有看到 Amodei 的荒谬主张在主流媒体中被剖析，但以下是周末许多推文中的一些，它们正确地批评了 Amodei。
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Let’s start with Eric Topol, a well-respected and very pro-AI physician/researcher who is having none of it. (Topol also notes that Hassabis made a similar absurd argument last year on 60 Minutes, maybe the most naive things I have ever heard Hassabis say. AI might someday contribute as Hassabis says, but certainly not in the next decade. Many of the quotes below happened to be directed to Amodei, who was in the news, but apply to what Hassabis claimed as well.)
让我们从 Eric Topol 开始，他是一位备受尊敬且非常支持 AI 的医生/研究员，对此完全不买账。（Topol 还指出，Hassabis 去年在 60 Minutes 节目中也提出了类似的荒谬论点，这可能是我听过 Hassabis 说过的最天真的话。AI 也许有一天会像 Hassabis 说的那样做出贡献，但肯定不是在接下来的十年内。下面许多引述恰好是针对当时在新闻中的 Amodei，但也适用于 Hassabis 的主张。）
By way of setting realistic expectations, Topol adds:
为了设定现实的期望，Topol 补充道：
Caltech’s Bren Professor of Computational Learning, Lior Pachter, wrote
加州理工学院的 Bren 计算学习教授 Lior Pachter 写道：
Computational biologist Keith Robison:
计算生物学家 Keith Robison：
Cancer biologist John Herrman wrote (plausibly if optimistically, but nowhere near as optimistically as Amodei):
癌症生物学家 John Herrman 写道（可能乐观，但远没有 Amodei 那么乐观）：
MD/PhD Marios Georgakis asks:
MD/PhD Marios Georgakis 问道：
(As far as I know, the correct answer to the question about real plans posed in the first sentence is a simple “no”.)
（据我所知，第一句话中关于实际计划的问题，正确答案简单来说就是“没有”。）
The software engineer/enterpreneur Chombe Bupe, responding to Georgakis, adds:
软件工程师兼企业家Chombe Bupe回应Georgakis时补充道：
Even the ultimate AI optimist, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, wasn’t really buying:
即便是最乐观的AI支持者，沃顿商学院教授Ethan Mollick，也并不真正买账：
Penultimate words to Dr. Catharine Young, a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in a brutal pair of tweets further underscoring Amodei’s naïveté with respect to medicine.
最后，哈佛陈曾熙公共卫生学院高级研究员Catharine Young博士在两条尖锐的推文中进一步强调了Amodei在医学方面的天真。
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There are a great many things about Amodei that I respect, including both his technical chops and business sense, as well as his bravery in standing up to the US government on important matters. But his habit of giving people unrealistic hope is not one of them. (See also the time he claimed that AI could double human lifespan by the end of the decade.)
我对Amodei有很多敬佩之处，包括他的技术能力和商业头脑，以及他在重要问题上敢于对抗美国政府的勇气。但他给人不切实际希望的习惯，并不在此列。（参见他曾声称AI能在本十年末将人类寿命翻倍的说法。）
In fairness, Amodei may believe what he says, but in that case he ought take Dr. Young’s suggestion of doing a medical internship, in order to better calibrate his understanding of the challenges in medicine.
公平地说，Amodei可能相信自己所说的话，但如果是这样，他应该采纳Young博士的建议，进行医学实习，以便更好地校准他对医学挑战的理解。
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